Page:James Thomason (Temple).djvu/68

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JAMES THOMASON

is at present exercised. I will proceed next to classify these forms and to point out the principal features which characterize them. The proprietary right may rest either in a single individual or in a community of people. The community may divide amongst themselves the profits of the estate, either according to their ancestral shares or according to some arbitrary rule having reference to the quantity of land which each member cultivates.'

These quotations serve as a key to the policy which he pursued afterwards, when governing the whole country.

After discussing the various categories into which the tenures group themselves, he turns to tenant right, and divides

'The non-proprietary cultivators into (1) those having an hereditary and transferable right to hold their land at a fixed rate, (2) those having a right of occupancy at a fixed rate either for a certain term or during their own lives, (3) tenants at will.'

This Report was received with marked approbation by the governing authorities. Fourteen years later (1851) the Court of Directors in London wrote of it: 'This document possesses a more than ordinary interest, involving a scientific and discriminating enquiry into the diverse and intricate landed tenures.'

It has been truly said that his administration of the Azamgarh district was 'the miniature' of his government of the North-Western Provinces. He had now acquired that self-reliance which was to sustain him hereafter with a strength that nothing